PER 2015
process. Without the House of Commons, all that is left is people making laws to rule themselves. As a result, the equilibrium of checks and balances would be distorted and the city would soon be on the verge of ruin. Advocates of direct democracy also tend to be indifferent over the incompatibility of such a regime with a human society. No human city could avoid the corruption of domination. Human nature has an insatiable appetite for power, for control over other people, no matter to what extent this desire is. This is inevitably true. The very existence of law is to prevent excessive individualism from taking over. According to Halsbury¹, our constitution is based upon the idea that ‘no body or political party has a monopoly of wisdom, that State bodies should be democratically and legally accountable, and that they should promote good government in the general interest, rather than in their personal interests.’ In the United Kingdom, power is divided to ensure that it never becomes dangerously concentrated in the hands of one stakeholder. The removal of a legislative assembly would lead to people making laws to rule themselves, in which the city could easily fail because of the uncertainty of whether or not people would be biased towards themselves. In fact, when power is concentrated on the public’s hands, the inevitable deformity of human nature will take its toll when it comes to decision-making: the egoistical side of the coin would dominate that of the rational and benevolent when making a decision. Once rationality succumbs to the selfishness of human nature, human actions would be susceptible to ignorance, stupidity and irrationality, thus instead of what Abraham Lincoln said, it would become ‘’Government of self-interest, by self-interest and for self- interest’’. In Plato’s Republic , Socrates presented a paradox in a human city¹: human beings have multifarious needs, but they are not self-sufficient. Therefore, Plato believed that in an ideal city, people are clairvoyant enough to specialize in what they are at best in order to maximize their self-interest, which they later exchange their products with others. A fisherman fishes, a farmer farms, and so on. Of course, there are conflicts of interests under the system of collaborative effort when distributing production and benefits: everyone wants to maximize their share, and it is here that the selfishness of human nature takes its toll and human beings’ strong inclination to self-interest dominates their rationality. I shall present an analogy to make my argument more fathomable and conceivable. In fact, similar to a filter, the rationale of a complex political hierarchy is to fend off such ignorance: we could see the impurities as ignorance, stupidity and some other innate traits of human nature which impede and hinder people’s attempts to make the right decision; The very existence of a legislative assembly is to get the most out of the inevitable trait of human nature while ensuring there is some constraint on the worse excesses of human nature. This is similar to a filter where most but not all of the impurities could be got rid of. Without such filter, the abundance of ignorance and stupidity would take over and hamper the development of the society. Advocates of direct democracy believe that without centralised decision-making, the politicians, the media, the religions, the unelected lords and shadow government of any nature cannot manipulate the power any longer, as the power will be with every individual. However, we must understand the substantial differences in the role of the general public under a system of representative democracy and direct democracy. Under representative democracy, political parties advertise their political ideologies and practical policies through monitored, legitimate means. Here is why a political hierarchy is indispensable: To reduce the number of donkey votes, people would need impartial and amplified guidance from official political institutions, as well as regulations on political parties’ way of advertising their policies. Conventional ways of providing these guidance are advertising the rights and roles of being part of a civil society through TV advertisements, flyers or leaflets. Under direct democracy, the role of citizens would be more proactive. Without this felicitous, legitimate guidance, the ignorance, stupidity and irrationality of human nature would instantly become vulnerable to manipulation by the alleged ruler through a
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